ASTANA, April 25 (RIA Novosti) - The global community underestimates Central Asia, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev said on Thursday at the Eurasian media forum in Astana.
“Central Asia has long stopped being a godforsaken periphery and no man’s land,” the Kazakh leader said. “There are certain people who are unable to notice or simply ignore the changing realities of our region… The reason for that is archaic stereotypes, which are yet to be overcome, shared by certain mass media, analysts and sometimes even politicians.”
Nazarbayev described Central Asia as a “new dynamic subregion of Eurasia and the world.”
“The peculiarity of our countries is that they are... absolutely new states with absolutely different quality of their population, a dynamic economic model, new national spirit and opportunities,” he said.
The geographical definition of Central Asia is indistinct. It generally includes five republics of the former Soviet Union: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, though Afghanistan and Mongolia are sometimes included.
The region faces growing threats from Islamist extremism and drug trafficking from war-torn Afghanistan. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), one quarter of all Afghan-produced heroin is shipped via Central Asia.
A 2012 human rights report by the US Department of State describes the ex-Soviet central Asian states as lacking an independent judiciary, and where citizens’ rights to change their government are limited, and freedoms of speech, the press, assembly and religion are lacking.
Kazakhstan has enjoyed spectacular economic growth in the last decade, due to a combination of economic reforms by Nazarbayev, who has led the republic since independence, and a windfall from high prices and strong demand for its enormous oil and mineral wealth, a Princeton University study said.
